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Blockbuster Working on Set-Top Box
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Hollywood Reporter and news.com, Blockbuster will soon be announcing yet another reason not to go to a rental store. A media-delivering set-top box is in the works for the company, leveraging the store's existing competence in the industry to provide a viable alternative to iTunes, Xbox Live, and Amazon. 'There was no mention of price or how such a service would work in the report. But let's think about this: to compete with Apple TV or Vudu, the device would have to cost around $200, and rentals of movies and TV shows should be around $3 to $4 each, which would be slightly cheaper than rentals of new releases from Blockbuster currently. The big advantage Blockbuster would enjoy over Apple TV, Vudu, and TiVo, it seems, would be selection.'" I still think they're kinda doomed.
I still think they're kinda doomed.
Me too. For the last two decades, people have looked at their computers and wanted the things to be information centers. That includes media, business information, personal contacts, everything through recipes and music.
Read our lips, big corporations. We don't want more gadgets. We want our gadgets to get more powerful and less unreliable so they save us time and make life more relaxing, not more gadgety.
technical writing / development
I think it's time for Blockbuster to execute their exit strategy. I agree, they are doomed. With all of the existing machines listed providing similar capabilities, why would someone buy yet *another* box to hook up to their TV? And there's also Redbox....
Why would I buy another set-top box? Unless it can do everything that TiVo can do and better/cheaper, why bother?
Why am I going to buy an AppleTV/vudu that's a TiVo that can't record live TV?
Why pay $200 for a box where your cable box can do the same thing with on demand with out eating up your internet bandwidth.
It's doomed because of the major ISPs. Be it Cable or Telco, the service would consume more bandwidth than they have allocated to their customers. Second, it competes with same services they offer.
Life is not for the lazy.
Perhaps their only chance is to loss lead with a consumer friendly rental package of content, just to get the devices in houses. However, unless they get pretty reasonable penetration, I can't see it working.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
You can easily make a box that streams videos for a retail price of $200. Probably even high definition. Blockbuster could no doubt tie it to a service, and take a hit on it to promote their service. Offer a subscription service that allows a selection of videos with popular movies at a premium and they can cover their capital costs in a few months.
Top Sex Bot, this is news. The article however, is not.
The big advantage Blockbuster would enjoy over Apple TV, Vudu, and TiVo, it seems, would be selection.
Bzzt, wrong. Blockbuster will still have to negotiate licensing agreements with the major distribution companies, just like everyone else in the game. They can't simply rip their existing DVD offerings and stream them to customers. Blockbuster's in a tough spot here; if they remain a dealer of physical media, they'll get pummeled by streaming content. Their only hope for survival is to leverage their brand and physical locations to introduce a set-top box that grabs sizable market share. The trouble is that a video rental chain is going to have an extremely difficult time going head to head with the likes of Apple. It'd be like a record chain introducing an mp3 player in the hope that they can prevent iTunes and Amazon from decimating them.
Is for blockbuster to preload each of these boxes with 1-2TB of movies already, with monthly service contract to access the whole catalog. Additionally, they would have to send out new HDD's every so often with additional content. The Set-Top Box market is already full of on demand options. Unfortunately, knowing blockbuster they will make a 1/2 assed last minute effort to copy someone else who is way ahead of them (Netflix? anyone).
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
I thought you could only get those things in Japan!
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
This won't work, pretty obviously. But I think Blockbuster will be around for quite a while, because I think physical dvd rentals will be around for quite a while. About half the time I rent a dvd, it's because I need something to watch pretty much immediately. Few people have the bandwidth for downloads to fill that need. Netflix and the Blockbuster mail-delivery programs both work great, but don't fulfill the instant gratification need, either. And neither rents videogames! (What a tremendous lack.)
So, I think they're doomed, but it'll be a decade or two, not a year or two.
Maybe we'll get a better codec out of this, like we did when DivX failored?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'm hoping we'll get the cool new codex from BlockBuster, after their failed launch (like we did with DivX).
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I can't wait to start paying late fees when my computer can't download their movies fast enough due to my poor broadband service!
Will this go the same way Circuit City's ill-fated DIVX movie rental system goes?
You know, as for me the better way is to use my PC as PC and connected to 5.1 and 42" tv as mediabox. So I don't have to pay and pay more and more for new devices. I don't need them. I do as I saw there http://marchelly.org.ua/wiki/Mediabox Russian! Linux BOX + Plasma tv + 5.1 audio + IR is the best choise for me and it can play video from the net! All hdtv dvd etc from my server storage.
So does anybody here need that... thing?
I tried using Blockbustre for a while. But their utter incompetence at renting DVD-based products ultimately drove me away. First off they only sell you the 'child safe' versions of a lot of DVDs, so you never even get to see what the director actually intended. Once I tried going through the whole Alias program. They were missing a disk right in the middle of the last season (which I didn't find out about until I tried to rent it). They said they could not, and would not order the disk, and that this kind of thing happened all the time. And of course there were months when each time I came in they would beg me to do the online thing. The last straw was when I went to rent two movies at normal price and the clerk told me I was throwing that money away compared to what it would cost to get it online. I realized she was right, and after that I went to Netflix, and never went back. I think Blockbustre is like that Real Player company, once you've proven to be beyond a doubt how evil you are at your chosen field of business, I will NEVER go back to you.
Can your cable box get you Robocop, Twin Peaks, or La Planete Savauge when you want it or just whatever the media companies decide what you should choose from?
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
They tried this already...
http://www.forbes.com/2000/07/20/mu4.html
and we all know how well THAT worked out.
What dooms all of these slightly different boxes, whether cablebox, cablemodem, TiVo, or even gaming machines, is that people don't want a pile of different boxes, each one trapping them in a different "mode" in which they use their TV. Where each content mode has a different GUI, and lots of redundant overlap with the others. They certainly don't want to get locked into different boxes with different viewing modes for different sets of the same kind of content, like movies. Who wants to care whether they're watching a "cable movie" or a "TiVo movie" or a "disc movie" or a "Blockbuster movie"?
What will replace all these boxes and modes is an open standard box that does it all with a unified GUI. It might even take "expansion boxes", to handle retrieving and decoding different data types, especially if they're as different as, say, a videogame and a newshour.
That's why I say "game consoles" will replace all these different "media terminals". The Sony Playstation3 is probably the winner waiting for the world to catch up with it. With the imminent introduction of PlayTV, a TV decoder, the PS3's single GUI will play regular cable (or broadcast) TV and enable tivo DVR, and of course games and DVD/Blu-Ray, as well as on-demand and multicast Internet video (and music, and telephony...). Since the FCC has mandated that cablecos stop bundling set-top boxes with their networks and data (including TV data) service, the PlayTV cable decoder will fill that gap. If PlayTV had a DOCSIS modem built in, it would do it all - until then, the DOCSIS modem gets its cable from a splitter off the incoming cableco coax, just like now with the regular cablemodem, but the DOCSIS modem can plug right into the PS3 gigabit ethernet port (or one of its USB ports).
The important difference is the integration. The PS3 has a single GUI for all that. It's also got multiple parallel DSPs ("SPUs") onchip, for fast processing all of that different media, all in parallel, all flippable around "picture in picture" (or whatever paradigm Sony brings to true multimedia). The PS3 runs Linux already on its PPC, with drivers arriving for video and other media processing on those SPUs. So even the "PC" might get sucked into this single platform.
There will be a few years while the PS3 is still ahead of its time. In that time, Blockbuster and the others might have some markets they can reach with their dumbed-down, simple "single media" players. But they'll have to invest quite a lot into new kinds of tech they're not familiar with. All the while showing Sony what works and what doesn't, for Sony's paid-off manufacturing plants to adopt as software on the PS3s increasingly filling people's homes. Eventually the shakeout will come (not too far off), and Sony's position and diversity will win. The dominance of Sony in that landscape will also intimidate smart investors from backing competitors, further delivering the market to Sony instead.
This analysis could also apply to other game consoles, like the X-Box. But the X-Box took a serious setback by betting on HD-DVD instead of Blu-Ray, and against Sony which controls what has now won the HD format wars for physical distribution (which beats Internet speeds in the USA for the next couple years for most people). X-Box is also not able to compete with the PS3 parallelism, either in the multiple streams or in the ultimate rendering chip to the TV. And so even the leader right now, the Wii, will be underpowered for the multimedia challenge the PS3 will win.
It's a win for us, too. Because it will work only if these different media work on open standards, which is the only way to integrate them on a single box, rather than proprietary formats on proprietary, redundant, compartmentalized boxes. Which means the overall economics and tech directions favor openness. A non-PS3 PC with the same horsepower, and 3rd party integrated GUIs could come in and compete, too. Which means you.
--
make install -not war
That's only a problem if you actually want to watch Robocop, Twin Peaks, or La Planete Savauge...
And how does this compete with the Pirate Bay, exactly?
expandfairuse.org
No, the only way this would work is if the customer doesn't have to buy a $200 hardware device, but can rent the box for, say, $15 month or so. Amortize the box costs like cell phone companies do.
Some people will do anything to rid themselves of Comcast...
like get a better deal with more HD on direct tv
Blockbuster is proposing to provide a similar service to Netflix, only at two to four times the marginal cost* AND an up-front fee?
*It's one movie per dollar of your plan, right? or is it unlimited now?
I mean, I see the advantage of a set-top box, but that marginal cost is going to make a lot of people think twice, non? I guess it worked for Tivo, though...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
They should just buy SageTV (http://www.sagetv.com) and their HD Media Extender (woops, I shouldn't be probably saying it since I do own one and it is the single best piece of electronic equipment I have ever bought).
Probably not, but then neither will Blockbuster, unless, you know the movie was a blockbuster. So, forget about La Planete....
The point is, Blockbuster was never famous for carrying a wide range of titles anyways. Compare them to Netflix and you will see why. So, your argument is correct but self-defeating at the same time!!
Uh, has Netflix taught you nothing?
So you're gonna charge me $200 for a box, make me pay for my own network connection, use up all my bandwidth, then charge me $4 each movie?
I don't think you have thought your cunning plan all the way through.
the store's existing competence in the industry
C'mon, am I really going to be the first one to point out the hilarity of that phrase?
"La Planete Savauge..."
I wanted to watch this film. Even with Netflix, I had to wait for it to become available on DVD. I would never have seen it if I had cable TV.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It competes for shelf space, back panel connections and room on the power strip.
It competes with the services of your cable or internet provider.
Time-Warner owns Harry Potter. Why should it let Blockbuster in on the action?
It duplicates the functionality already built into your DVR, video game console, computer and home media server.
I'd not be surprised to see the same functionality built into the stand-alone Blu-Ray player, the HT receiver, or the HDTV itself.
Denon builds a Rhapsody subscription-compatible Internet radio player into its high end HT components today. Plug in a USB drive and you are more than halfway there.
No reason why the independent hardware manufacturer shouldn't let you purchase a la carte. From Amazon. The BBC. Disney and so on.
This whole thing is rediculous and is exactly why open standards exist. I should be able to buy a settop box on my own and point it at any content providers I want over my neutral pipe (say what you will about the modem age, the telephone company had no control over the bits passing over my line). I want a Warner Bros. movie, I go to the Warner Bros. content point (some web service somewhere) and buy the movie from them. If they want to focus on their core competencies and license out the movies to someone else, that's fine. But it seems dumb to have "blockbuster" and "apple" and whomever competing over delivering the same content. The only thing that middlemen add value to is having a single subscriber account - and that's really because there's no way for me to pay them without setting up an account and going to a third party. And as "channels" - setting up syndication points that buy X copies of the show in bulk from the content providers and resell for a discount as part of a package. So what's currently "SciFi" becomes an all-you-can-eat selection of various shows.
Blockbuster's business model is dead. Shoving it into some half-assed internet service isn't going to make it live again.
AND all without a single commercial? Thought not. And forget skipping, thats just trash. If I am paying for a service, I don't want a single damn commercial. Thats why I refuse to pay a dime for TV service.
"Network provider Enron Broadband Services, a subsidiary of Enron ene (nyse: ene), partnered with Blockbuster bbi (nyse: bbi) yesterday in a 20-year exclusive deal that aims to sell movie-on-demand services, including 500 titles, on its broadband network by year's end."
Careful What You Wish For....
Another remote to lose? Sonnofa squirrell. Make it work with my universal remote and I'll consider it. And get off my lawn!
..For a second, I thought the headline was "Working on Sex-Bot Box"
I'm studying Blockbuster in my MBA program. They are really getting their lunch eaten by Netflix. Really and truly. They eventually copied the Netflix model, but they charged too much. Although they had the great idea of letting you drop them off in the store(actually, brilliant) it was too little too late. They are WAY behind on subscribers with little hope of turning the tide. Rentals are dwindling, they can't charge late fees any more. The brick and mortar stores are really dragging down profatability. They are in a downward spiral that is going to be tough to reverse.
My group is studying possible strategies going forward and we pretty much concluded they have to do a box like this. The DVD is now obsolete and it's replacement, the Blu-Ray may be slow on the uptake and worse, even if it were the best newest thing, Netflix will still be eating their lunch because it has the same delivery model as the DVD. Blockbuster needs to get away from the costly brick and mortar stores it operates and needs to skip the Blu-Ray wave. This means they need to deliver HD content directly to consumers. They could copycat the Netflix download service (which they are working on) but my opinion (and probably a lot of others) is that it sucks to use a PC to watch movies and Joe Public isn't savvy enough to use MythTV's or other home-grown media boxes to get the video to the TV.
Apple has a really good set top box, but it seems to not be taking hold. HD content is still pretty slow to deliver via broadband download. Maybe as higher-speed services like FIOS start coming to the mainstream, this can change and the download model will be viable but Blockbuster may be in chapter 11 before this happens. And besides that, they have to start poaching back subscribers from Netflix or they will be screwed when Netflix has their own set-top box.
My clever marketing idea was to pick up the AOL model and start sending out Mail Service subscriptions to everyone and anyone. Offer three months free or something and keep them hooked. Then when the online downloads or set-top boxes become stable offerings, then they have an easy way to convert people instead of having to gain all new customers. It's a critical race right now for subscribers and Netflix is winning that battle. They need to start playing hardball.
Just like every other set top box on the market.
With these newfangled flat panel TV sets, none of the boxes stay on top of the set. They all fall on the floor.
Have gnu, will travel.
Blockbuster is already on the decline. Its decline is so obvious that it's the subject of mockery. The fact that they still charge a quasi-late fee (even though they claimed they eliminated fees) by calling it a "stocking charge" is proof enough that their store model is doomed. Even their online store doesn't charge a stocking fee for keeping a DVD longer than needed.
It kind of reminds me of an Onion gig: "Please, we're just asking for one more chance," added (vice president of marketing) Waters as she dropped to her knees and extended her arms out to the assembled crowd. They might be able to salvage some business, but as far as being the trendsetter? Too little, too late.
ISP A-$40 for 20Gb-$1.50 per gig afterwards Or ISP B-$40 for 35Gb-$1.00 per gig afterwards. I personally hope that competition will mean that there will always be someone offering "unlimited" but at least in my neighborhood it doesn't look that way. But IMHO this is a good example of why a "pay per gig" Internet is a bad idea. We are just now figuring out new and interesting business ideas for our broadband, but by going tiered all these new services will just dry up and IMHO we'll go back to the bad old days of the 80's where you had to watch every bit like a hawk. But that is just my 02c,YMMV.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If anyone can charge late fees on movie downloads, BallBu$ter can. Well, if they're making vapor press releases like this, it only means they'll be out of business soon enough.
That makes no sense. The studios aren't going to give all those free rentals which means Blockbuster will have to eat all that cost as well. How that allows Blockbuster to end up in a position where they've "made back most of the cost" is beyond me.
Blockbuster's computer systems are ancient (at least what they use in all their stores): they're slow, confusing, prone to debilitating problems, and almost useless for any task outside of basic transaction functions.
Blockbuster did develop a new computer system that supposedly solved all of these problems--however there are currently no plans to roll it out beyond a handful of model stores due to cost.
If a customer is looking for a product your store is out of, you must call other stores to see if they have it, there is no way to check inventory of another store using the existing computer system. The search function to check your store's inventory is as basic as it comes: you can only search by product title, and any mistakes in spelling, formatting, etc. will lead to zero results or a list of hundreds of titles which you do not even carry (and you can only view 10 titles at a time, 4-5 seconds to go to the next set of 10, and you can't go back to a previous set of 10). This leads to many employees simply telling customers that they are out of stock, or do not carry an item because they don't want to deal with the pathetically limited search function. It also means that if a customer is looking for a title, and they know the plot, the actors, the director, etc, but not the title they are simply out of luck until someone remembers the title. That's not even the half of it.
Blockbuster also acquires inventory and distributes it to stores in quantities that are unbelievable. Want a blu-ray movie? Too bad, stores only get a maximum of 3 copies for rent (just changed recently to 5 I believe) despite the fact that 90% of the blu-ray titles are rented out at least 75% of the time. Blockbuster charges more for blu-ray rentals.
Blockbuster also has one of the highest turnover rates in the industry.
The deals Blockbuster gets with studios are bad, shockingly, amazingly bad. Blockbuster pays so much more per movie than you would ever believe.
There are so many ways blockbuster could improve its business significantly it's not even funny.
So what do I think when I hear BBI is rolling out a set-top box and on demand service? Short BBI. They will fail. Their existing customers won't switch--the only reason their existing customers still come to the stores is the fact that they are so far from tech savvy, they don't consider any alternative.
BBI's market cap is currently $640M.
Haven't you heard of the vacuum cleaner?
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
I think the guesses on price are totally off. My guess is the price of the box is going to be $299 and that the rentals will be EXACTLY the same price they are in the store.
#1 - First generation hardware is always expensive. I'm sure if it is successful, they will do a cost reduced version that is a lot more competitive with the low end AppleTV
#2 - If Blockbuster is involved, there is no way they are undercutting the prices at their stores. No way.
but how are they going to deliver the overpriced bottles of Coke and buckets of stale popcorn that they must make most of their profits on?
Seriously, this can't be efficient for them. They should just jump on AppleTV and give one away/cheap with an all you can eat sub for $300 a year. Otherwise a multiplicity of set top boxes will start competing for floor space with the games machines around people's TVs. Either that or they will have to provide their own bandwidth and then there will be a multiplicity of pipes into those set top boxes and games consoles.
Why charge for the box? If you have a membership, or an online account, you could just pay the standard monthly fees and have access to as many movies all the time. An on demand movie box subscription service. All I can say is that the first company to give me streaming HD movies from my pc (like hulu hd gallery, so I don't have to use WMP) will be the first to get my monthly payments...
That is so over priced it's not even humorous.
I'm ok with the hardware serving one purpose with one provider. I'm not ok with paying for that hardware. Maybe $200 with a $200 credit for downloads. Then the movie "rentals" should be about $2 each, last a week or more, watchable as many times as I'd like, and in high def. The television shows could also be rentals, but only cost like $0.50.
Also, in certain areas (my home town is a good example) the ISP may be willing to host a "Blockbuster server", and allow full network speed downloads from it to their own subscribers. Then Blockbuster manages and keeps the thing updated. That way when you want to watch a 1080p movie you can get the whole thing downloaded at some wicked fast rate and start watching it immediately. It also takes a strain off of the ISP's connection and the internet as a whole.
Blockbuster has a good concept, but bad execution.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
So I guess Blockbuster just changed things a little bit.
1) Release a set-top box
2) !!!
3) Profit???
Between the free video on-demand service and Netflix coupled with Gordian Knot and a particularly helpful Supreme Court ruling, there is no need whatever for a $3-4 dollar rental service be it Itunes or Blockbuster.
If they come up with a Netflix-like business model, where you can get a certain # of hours per month (or better yet, unlimited, one movie at a time though) for a nominal, flat fee, they will get to live up to their name - they will be a real BLOCKBUSTER!
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels